[location: Central, Transverto tram line or Speares - choose your own adventure!]

[tin_hearts]

The past three weeks, Wyatt hasn't slept much at all. It's a known fact, broadcast loud and clear by the dark circles under his eyes for all to see. It's only now, roughly a week after Glitch's return from the dead, that he's well and truly succumbed to his own limitations. He's okay. He's alive and well, and real, and somewhere between putting on

Comments

[text]

[justaddmarbles]

[ and at some point there will be this: ]

Letting you know all's well. If in-person confirmation would be more valid for you I'm fine with that. Besides, I think we still have party stuff to finalize. Just give me day/time/place/etc.

-G

[text]

[tin_hearts]

Anytime. Better get moving and finish early than the other way around.

[text]

[justaddmarbles]

Prior preparation prevents piss-poor performance, as several of my old project notes say. Four o' clock?

[text]

[tin_hearts]

I'll be there. W/coffee?

[Location: Speares]

[tothelightshown]

DG was building a snowman in a quiet park a short distance from the tram stop in Speares. She wasn't alone. The ghost that visited her most frequently was her sister and, more often than not, it was the younger version of Azkadellia - from the days when they’d been happy and everything had been simple - rather than the older version. The version that wanted to build snowmen and play games rather than take over the O.Z. She hadn’t been able to ignore her and she hadn’t been able to evade her. In the end, she’d decided to try and give her what she wanted.

[Location: Speares]

[tin_hearts]

At first, Cain mistook the two girls playing in the snow for Extras, so focused on staying on his feet on the slippery sidewalk. The weather seemed to hover indecisively between the rainy end of Fall and an actual, cold-to-the-bone wintertime. One day it snowed, the next it would rain, leaving the streets slick and shiny like black tar and deceptively dangerous. The whole town seemed striped black and white, and what drew his eyes to the playing ground was the soft peach of a young girl's dress.

Her laughter rang through the air like soft bells, but all he could think about was - Extra or not - a young girl like that shouldn't be out in this weather without a proper coat.

Imagine his surprise as he recognized the older girl as none other than his friend and fellow Ozian. "DG?"

Re: [Location: Speares]

[tothelightshown]

"Cain!" DG stopped in her tracks, surprised and embarrassed. She dropped her armful of snow, reaching up to tuck a piece of hair behind her ear with a sheepish smile. “Hey.”

The ghost of her sister hovered behind her for a moment, impervious to the cold but not to the arrival of a stranger. After a moment, she disappeared as quickly as she’d arrived.

“We were building a snowman.”

Which was true, though there was still a lot that her explanation didn’t cover.

[Location: Speares]

[tin_hearts]

"So I see," said Cain with what passed for a smile on his face - and even if it was a slight one as far as anyone else would say, for him it was a big improvement from when he first came here. Of course, it did nothing to explain what he was doing in Speares of all places.

"Nothing wrong with building snowmen." Especially not after the living death she'd been through.

[Location] Birdhouse In Central

[smecker]

Paul doesn't come to the door for Cain, but that may be because he's on the third story and it's a bit of a hike. Not like Wyatt doesn't have handkeyed access to the whole building now anyway.

When he hears a familiar tread on the stairs, Paul barely glances up from the inside of the oven, which he is scrubbing out with a steel wool pad.

"C'mon down, cowboy, there's coffee if you want it. Cold like an undertaker's dick out there."

[Location] Birdhouse In Central

[tin_hearts]

So much for his faint hope of just...making his delivery, get the damned well out of there and pretending like he never did.

He'll swear on all three moons that he had a better, actually well thought out plan when he left his place, but for the life of him he can't remember what it was.

Go there, hand over the letter (that has started to actually, physically burn into his skin - and he knows it's an illusion, knows it's just nerves, but he can't ignore it), give Paul a great deal of space and some kind of... Something. Like reassurance.

But all he can think of right now is how dry his throat has gone, and how it's entirely too warm in here after hiking through twelve blocks of icy washboards underfoot in too many layers.

"I'll have to take your word for it," he says, mouth quirking in involuntary amusement. Coffee, or no coffee.

Aw, hell. He might as well. They're both adults, and more to the point, Cain's never been one to run and hide. "Should I get you some too?"

[Location] Birdhouse In Central

[smecker]

"Sure," Paul grunts from inside the oven. "I'm going to need something to get the goddamned taste of charcoal out from my mouth, I keep getting little particles in it."

Maybe if you didn't talk so much, Paul.

There's a few more seconds of concerted scrubbing and then Paul emerges. He is wearing... swim goggles, over his eyes, which he pulls up to his forehead. Then he strips off the yellow rubber gloves he's got on.

"Fun fact: the coroners in New-- the coroners in one of the cities I did some of my training in, we used to pull shit on the other cops, like stretch out on the slabs under sheets and then jump on them when they came down for autopsy reports. Ah, to be young again. How's you?"

[Location] Birdhouse In Central

[tin_hearts]

Me? Oh, good. About ready to crawl out of my own skin. You?

But no, can't say that or there'll be questions, and he just can't handle questions right now. Apart from the easy ones, the mundane, day-to-day ones. "Freezing," he says with a grin, coming over with two cups.

Heart beating like I'm about to have a coronary event - and you know, that's not too far from the truth.

Can't say that either, so instead he ducks in for a quick kiss. "And that's just mean. Really? You're not just jerking my chain, are you."